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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Good morning! It's Tuesday again and you know what that means! It's Let's Talk Tuesday.

Thank you for the overwhelming response to last weeks post on Gelatos. I have loved chatting with all of you about that tutorial. If you missed it you can find it HERE. I can't wait to see what all of you create with your gelatos. Today I thought we'd change things up a bit and try a process video for Let's Talk Tuesday this week.

I've been working on a super-secret, super-exciting project (I can't wait to tell you about it... in a few more days). While I had my video camera set up I shot this process video. I'm excited to share it with you. Let me know what you think. I'd love to know weather you enjoy photo or video tutorials or both.

Without further adieu here's my video:

I also have one more video on my youtube channel that you may have missed:

I promise I will have more process/tutorial videos coming up. Thank you for stopping by today and for all your support!

Thursday, July 24, 2014

A few days ago I was asked to create a project for Elle's Studio using this sketch:I immediately fell in love with this sketch. I has so many possibilities. I may have gotten a little carried a way and used this sketch more than once...three times to be exact.Here's what I came up with using the Elle's Studio Shine collection.

The title "fun in the sun" is actually lots of different layers. There's a 3x4 transparency over the teal 3x4 card. I love the fun detail it adds to my title block.

The other two layouts I created have been featured here too. HERE & HERE.

Each time I used this sketch I used it a little bit differently. I moved the title around and added journaling differently each time.

Do you have a sketch that you've used over and over? I've already used this sketch 3 times and I plan on using it even more.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Good morning! Today I'm blogging from my bed, I'm being lazy this morning recovering from spending an afternoon at the pool with the kiddos. We had so much fun but it's exhausting to take a toddler to the pool. She loves the water and has no fear, I'm thankful for the invention on the life jacket. Even with a life jacket she's a handful!

They're already asking when we can go back. The answer they got from me was, "maybe tomorrow if daddy can come." I think it's best if we take more than one adult to the pool when we take this little lady!While the kids and I were playing in the pool the Sierra Pacific Craft show in Salt Lake City was going on. I wish I was headed to this event. It's only a couple of hours away, maybe I should run away for a day ;) Bella Blvd is revealing their 4 new collections. I was lucky enough to play with these 4 collections a couple of weeks ago. I must say that they are adorable!! I love all of them: Tiny Tots, Hello Autumn, Halloween Magic and Christmas Cheer. I thought I would share all of my projects with you today.Let's start with Halloween Magic. I'm a sucker for a cute Halloween line and this line didn't disappoint me. I know I'll be using every last scrap of this line.

I rarely use purple in my projects, I just don't love purple. Somehow, I think it's okay mixed in an adorable Halloween project.

Let's look at Hello Autumn next. Can you tell I'm ready for Fall? I'm really not much of a summer person. I don't mind the warmth but I don't enjoy the sunburns that come with fair skin and long sunshiny days. I'm always ready for sweater season. I do own quite a few cardigans ;) Remember this layout?

This is one of my all time favorite layouts. There's nothing fancy about it but I love the story that is told and the products that I used. It's a perfect match.Now, I may be ready for Fall but I'm NOT ready for Christmas. I do love the Christmas Cheer collection though. It's so bright and cheerful. Traditional Christmas lines are my favorite to work with.

And last but not least, Tiny Tots. I showed this layout to you a few days ago here.

Whew, that's a lot of projects! I had so much fun making all of them! I can't wait to work with these collections a lot more in the coming months. Which of these collections will be making their way into your stash? Are they all on your must-have-list?

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Happy Tuesday! Thanks for stopping by for Let's Talk Tuesday. I'm so excited about today's post. I've been working on these projects off and on for a few weeks now.Right now a huge trend in scrapbooking is mixed media/artsy looking projects like Wilna Furstenburg is so amazing at creating. Her beautiful scrapbook pages could double as a piece of art work. Confession time: I love the look of these more "artsy" projects but I don't like getting messy when I'm scrapbooking. I typically don't like to use paints and other art supplies because I'm not the most careful person and inevitably will smear something across my photos; that's just how I roll. I stayed away until, I found gelatos. I love my gelatos! They allow me (a not so artsy person) to achieve the look of watercolors with much less mess.Let me show you how easy gelatos are and how much fun they are to work with.First of all, for those of you that don't know what a gelato is, let me explain. A gelato is kind of like a very thick watercolor paste in a tube, very similar to a tube of lip balm.

They are so easy to work with. All you do is write or draw with the gelato onto a piece of cardstock. (For all of these examples I used textured cardstock. You don't have to use textured, smooth cardstock will work just fine. It's really just a personal preference.)On the first project I used gelatos to create a rainbow background. Here's what my cardstock looked like right after I colored on it with the gelatos:

And here's what it looked like with just a little bit of water brushed on with a paint brush:

I just brushed water on the top portion (the blue portion) so you could see the difference.And here's what my background paper looked like right after I got done brushing the water on:

I didn't blend the colors very much on this project because I wanted them as a distinct rainbow, but gelatos blend beautifully.And here's the layout I created with this rainbow background:

And here's a detail shot of the gelato background in action. Doesn't it look like I used some fancy-schmancy watercolors?

On this next project I drew lots of different colored hearts with the gelatos, brushed them with water, let them dry, and then cut them out.Before water:

Before you add the water they look like crayon drawings. (They don't act like crayon though, they will smear if you run your finger across it.) After the hearts were brushed with water (still wet):

And here's the layout I created with the hearts:

I had a few little hearts left so I created a super simple card:

I used an orange gelato to highlight the area behind the title to emphasize the title on this layout:

Monday, July 21, 2014

The latest issue over at Paper Issues is live today, titled "Say Cheese" (think of any thing related to photos: favorite photo, camera embellishments, "say cheese" as a title, cheesy
smiles, Polaroid frames, Instagram/Polaroid/vintage photos, silly things
kids say, or just use Maya Road products). Maya Road is sponsoring this issue. They provided me with an adorable bag of goodies to play with. I jumped right in and knew that I wanted to incorporate lots of their metal clips onto my project.Don't you love that heart clip!?!??!?! I adhered it on with a little bit of glossy accents. It worked perfectly, even on a transparent frame.

Those cute white transparent frames are from Maya Road as well as the blue polka dot fabric tape. I wish you could feel the texture that the fabric tape adds to the paper elements.

When I had most of the layout finished it still felt like something was missing, so I took a ruler and drew a pencil line around the edge of the layout. Then I put a thin line of glossy accents over the pencil line and carefully placed some Maya Road twine on the line of glossy accents. I tied a bow in the lower left hand corner of the layout with the ends of the twine.

Make sure to link your projects to this issue so you can have your chance at winning a goodie bag from Maya Road. Link your projects HERE!Thanks for stopping by. Make sure to visit tomorrow for Let's Talk Tuesday.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Hey there! last week I had 2 layouts on the American Crafts Blog for grid week. When I received the challenge to create 2 layouts based on a grid the first thing that came to mind was a tic-tact-toe grid. I decided to create a tic-tact-toe grid by hand-stitching at 5 inches and 9 inches on my 12x12 piece of paper about an inch or inch and a half from the edge.

I added embellishments to the bottom right of the grid and to the right of the photo.

I added my photo to the center of the grid to keep it the focal point of the layout.

For the 2nd layout I created a layout based on Pinterest, not a layout I found on Pinterest on the actual Pinterest feed. I love the offset rectangles the fill the screen when I log into Pinterest. I recreated this grid by using 3x4 cards from the Plus One collection.

I placed the journaling on the back of the photo. It's easily viewable because it's only attached to the layout with a clothes pin.

And here's the completed layout, inspired by the Pinterest feed grid.

Hop on over to the American Crafts blog and check out the rest of Grid Week. I know the other designers have some amazing projects waiting for you there.

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About

Hello, I'm Becki Adams. My passion resides in photos and storytelling and the magic that happens when those two elements coincide. Memory keeping is a way of life for me and my family. There's something very special about documenting a memory with a photo.
Let's document our memories together. Come join me.